Interdisciplinary Science Reviews

The historiography of musical instrument design has long been dominated by organology: the science of musical instruments and their classification. Recently, however, scholars from Science & Technology Studies (STS) have also taken up the study of musical instrument development. This article reviews the newest organological and STS literature on musical instruments to show which questions and approaches STS has added to the rich work of the organologists. We first address the contribution of theories on innovation to the organologists’ discussions of what counts as a genuinely new musical instrument, as well as to their explanations for the rise of such instruments. Second, our argument will show how STS scholars have studied settings of musical instrument design that are beyond the dominant paradigm of the organologists. One example is the recent interest in STS for the use and development of musical instruments in the context of the laboratory. Another example is the study of contemporary practices of ‘retro-innovation': the reconstruction of early musical instruments, such as the replica design and restoration of North European baroque organs, and the reinvention of obsolete instruments. This article concludes with a few suggestions for the future study of musical instrument design from the perspective of STS.

Proof of authenticity is important both to scholars seeking insights and to investors more concerned with value. Is a ceramic 1400 years old? Is that music by Mozart? We seek parallels between scientific proof and musical authentication, focussing especially on some of the many opera arrangements for wind ensemble from the years c.1800. Such arrangements incorporate features characteristic of both arranger and original composer. We have developed a novel computer-based analysis based on numbers of rest bars in the instrumental wind parts, a simple but objective approach that works well in known examples. Specific cases analysed here were chosen both for their interest and as demanding tests for the method, including the divertimento containing the St Antoni Chorale, the Donaueschingen octet arrangement of Die Entführung, Mozart serenades, and arrangements of sixteen operas for winds. Pleyel was clearly not the composer of the St Antoni divertimento, as often asserted.

Significant digitization efforts have resulted in large multimodal music collections, which comprise music-related documents of various types and formats including text, symbolic data, audio, image, and video. The challenge is to organize, understand, and search musical content in a robust, efficient, and intelligent manner. Key issues concern the development of methods for analysing, correlating, and annotating the available multimodal material, thus identifying and establishing semantic relationships across various music representations and formats. Here, one important task is referred to as music synchronization, which aims at identifying and linking semantically corresponding events present in different versions of the same underlying musical work. In this paper, we give an introduction to music synchronization and show how synchronization techniques can be integrated into novel user interfaces that allow music lovers and researchers to access and explore music in all its different facets thus enhancing human involvement with music and deepening music understanding.

Opera essentially combines three layers — drama, music and singing — that have one thing in common: language. As neuroscience continues to explore how music is processed in the brain, similarities with language processing are becoming increasingly apparent. Listening to music involves the activation of numerous brain regions, including the so-called reward and pleasure centres, as well as some of the same areas associated with language processing. However, these findings do not explain why some people experience intense emotion, feel choked up or tearful, upon hearing an operatic voice. With language as a common denominator, Lacanian theory may provide some insight into this particular relationship between operatic vocal music and emotion. Therefore, a neuropsychoanalytic approach, combining current neuroscientific knowledge and psychoanalytic theory, may contribute to a deeper understanding of how and why the operatic voice is capable of evoking such powerful emotion.

Music is an integral part of life's highly pleasurable activities and has the ability to stimulate intellect as well as emotions. The neural mechanisms that allow for music to be considered as meaningful by humans are, however, poorly understood. Some musicologists have proposed that the creation of anticipatory structures modifying figure/ground relations is at the heart of what allows music to be meaningful and to convey emotion. Here, we review our current knowledge of how music is translated to the subjective meaningful experience of emotion and pleasure in both performers and listeners. We propose that anticipation acts as a fundamental mechanism underlying musical structuring and that this taps into the way that the brain works on different levels with a capacity to evoke pleasure in humans. Exemplified by two distinct, pleasure-evoking responses to music, the so-called ‘chills’, and the sensation of swing, we argue that the hedonic evaluation of both of these responses to music is mediated through the reward system, and is as such related to the underlying principles of musical expectancy.

This article offers a brief review of literature which demonstrates how interdisciplinary collaboration could help understand the role music plays in conflict situations. Research into the anthropology of armed conflict and into propaganda are two areas where the focus has only rarely covered music and musical activity. A number of concrete examples demonstrate how the use of music in conflict situations has implications for the justice system and policing. Recent studies into the potential of music to promote non-violent resolution of conflict are also reviewed, and in conclusion the authors note a number of other scientific disciplines — including music psychology and evolutionary musicology — that could provide further input into the issue of music and conflict research.